Thread: Syllable Breaks in Russian

Hi!

I was wondering if anyone could help me by explaining the rules relating to syllable breaks in spoken russian. I have read that the rule is that the break comes between a vowel and the following consonant (e.g o-TBRO-seet) except in the case of the consonants r, l, m, and n (e.g SOOM-ka). I have also, however, seen the following pronunciations indicated in textbooks: oo-YOOT-nee, mask-VA, mezh-doo-na-ROD-nee, and PRED-nee. Should the correct pronunciation not be oo-YOO-tnee, ma-SKVA, me-zhdoo-na-RO-dnee, and PRE-dnee? I am terribly confused and any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

Tim

P.S Sorry for the roman letters

You can't break one syllable prefix when it's followed with the consonant.
So "о-тбро-сить" is incorrect ("от" is prefix). Correct: "от-бро-сить".
You also can't add to prefix part of word's stem if this part is not a syllable (i.e. doesn't contain a vowel). So "прис-лать" is incorrect, "при-слать" is correct.
Some words can be divided in a few (correct) ways:
бит-ва, би-тва
сук-но, су-кно
пробу-ждение, пробуж-дение
ца-пля, цап-ля etc.

whatever. These do not affect the pronunciation in any way, just like in english. The only reason you may need to know something like that is to do the line breaks correctly in writing, and russians themselves often have no idea about how to do these things right, as there are some complicated rules.

edit: thinking about it, actually these are less important in russian than in english, as the russian intonation is less regular and the secondary stress is much less common. e.g. "mezhdoonaROdnee" has just one stress, and the other syllables are not separated or distinguished from each other by intonation. A native English speaker would often pronounce it as "mehzhDOO-nahROdnee" or "MEHZHdoo-nahROdnee" which are of course both wrong.
(sorry for being repetitive, I'm just making sure that you realize that your question is not relevant for pronunciation.)

Thanks both of you for your explanations.

To make it clear, my question was about syllable breaks in spoken russian rather than the rules relating to the breaking-up of words in written russian. This does affect pronunciation: just as in English it is correct to pronounce, for example, the word catalogue 'cat-a-logue' and not 'ca-ta-logue', so in Russian 'af-TOH-boos' does not sound exactly the same as 'a-FTOH-boos'. But learning Russian it can be difficult to hear where the break occurs, and it was on this point that my question was centred.

Tim

Your question is meaningless. Words are pronounced as words, not distinct syllables, in Russian just as they are in English.

So...

'af-TOH-boos' does not sound exactly the same as 'a-FTOH-boos'

Yes, it quite categorically does sound the same, it is just written differently.

Originally Posted by scotcher

Your question is meaningless. Words are pronounced as words, not distinct syllables, in Russian just as they are in English.

So...

'af-TOH-boos' does not sound exactly the same as 'a-FTOH-boos'

Yes, it quite categorically does sound the same, it is just written differently.

The general rule is: A syllable is a vowel and it's preceeding consonants.

Originally Posted by Kikker

But learning Russian it can be difficult to hear where the break occurs

that's because it doesn't